“Real power comes not from hate, but from truth.”
Seth Grahame-Smith (1976) US fiction author
Source: Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
Quotes about power page 23
Philip G. Zimbardo book The Lucifer Effect
Source: The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil
“Magic is. But its power is nothing beside love.
--Prince Carrick”
Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer
Source: Jewels of the Sun
“As long as there are sovereign nations possessing great power, war is inevitable.”
Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity
“Power is when we have every justification to kill, and we don't”
Thomas Keneally (1935) Australian novelist
E. Lockhart book The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks
Source: The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks
F. Scott Fitzgerald book Tender Is the Night
Quoted, Tender is the Night (1934)
Source: Tender Is the Night
Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
Speech in the House of Commons, November 12, 1936 "Debate on the Address" http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1936/nov/12/debate-on-the-address#column_1107, criticizing Stanley Baldwin's record on rearmament against Hitler. <br class="br">The 1930s <br class="br">Context: Anyone can see what the position is. The Government simply cannot make up their mind, or they cannot get the Prime Minister to make up his mind. So they go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all powerful to be impotent. So we go on preparing more months and years — precious, perhaps vital to the greatness of Britain — for the locusts to eat.
Carl Schmitt (1888–1985) German jurist, political theorist and professor of law
Source: Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty
“Love commingled with hate is more powerful than love. Or hate.”
Joyce Carol Oates (1938) American author
On Boxing (1987)
“You’ve got on a white coat. (Ephani)
Awesome cognitive powers you have there. (Alexion)”
Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist
Source: Sins of the Night
Alex Flinn (1966) American children's writer
Source: A Kiss in Time
“The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves.”
William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer
"The Times Newspaper"
Political Essays (1819)
“The joy of writing.
The power of preserving.
Revenge of a mortal hand.”
Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) Polish writer
Emily Dickinson book The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
Source: The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
Billy Graham (1918–2018) American Christian evangelist
Source: Hope for Each Day: Words of Wisdom and Faith
“It is not power that corrupts but fear.”
Aung San Suu Kyi (1945) State Counsellor of Myanmar and Leader of the National League for Democracy
“An animal's eyes have the power to speak a great language.”
Martin Buber book I and Thou
I and Thou (1923)
“Through the machineries of greed, pettiness, and the abuse of power, love occurs.”
Thomas Pynchon book Gravity's Rainbow
Source: Gravity's Rainbow
“Chihiro, huh? Her real name's Chihiro? Can't beat the power of love.”
Hayao Miyazaki (1941) Japanese animator, film director, and mangaka
Source: Spirited Away, Volume 5
Thomas Sowell (1930) American economist, social theorist, political philosopher and author
Source: Knowledge And Decisions
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement
Source: 1960s, Strength to Love (1963), Ch. 1 : A tough mind and a tender heart
Context: Softmindedness often invades religion. … Softminded persons have revised the Beautitudes to read "Blessed are the pure in ignorance: for they shall see God." This has led to a widespread belief that there is a conflict between science and religion. But this is not true. There may be a conflict between softminded religionists and toughminded scientists, but not between science and religion. … Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power; religion gives man wisdom which is control. Science deals mainly with facts; religion deals mainly with values. The two are not rivals. They are complementary.
James Baldwin book No Name in the Street
No Name in the Street (1972)
Context: Well, if one really wishes to know how justice is administered in a country, one does not question the policemen, the lawyers, the judges, or the protected members of the middle class. One goes to the unprotected — those, precisely, who need the law's protection most! — and listens to their testimony. Ask any Mexican, any Puerto Rican, any black man, any poor person — ask the wretched how they fare in the halls of justice, and then you will know, not whether or not the country is just, but whether or not it has any love for justice, or any concept of it. It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.
“There is no meaning to life except the meaning man gives his life by the unfolding of his powers.”
Erich Fromm (1900–1980) German social psychologist and psychoanalyst
Source: Man for Himself: An Inquiry into the Psychology of Ethics
“The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.”
Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright
1890s
Source: The World (18 July 1894), Music in London 1890-1894 being criticisms contributed week by week to The World (New York: Vienna House, 1973)
Stormie Omartian (1942) American writer
Source: The Power of a Praying Woman
“Ignorance and power and pride are a deadly mixture, you know.”
Robert Fulghum book All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten
Source: All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten
“Those words, that voice, had more power over me than any phantom ever could.”
Richelle Mead (1976) American writer
Source: The Ruby Circle
Christopher Pike (1954) American author Kevin Christopher McFadden
Source: Black Blood
“Ultimately, the only power to which man should aspire is that which he exercises over himself.”
Elie Wiesel (1928–2016) writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor
Dale Carnegie book How to Stop Worrying and Start Living
Source: How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (1948), p. 110
William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads
Stanza 3.
Source: Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800), Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey (1798), Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey
Context: That time is past,
And all its aching joys are now no more,
And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this
Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur, other gifts
Have followed; for such loss, I would believe,
Abundant recompence. For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye, and ear,—both what they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognise
In nature and the language of the sense,
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.
“Freedom is participation in power.”
Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman
“For the powerful, crimes are those that others commit.”
Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist
Source: Imperial Ambitions: Conversations on the Post-9/11 World
Toni Morrison (1931–2019) American writer
As quoted in the New York Times Magazine (11 September 1994).
Howard Zinn (1922–2010) author and historian
Source: You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times